April 15, 2010, 12:02 AM EDT
By Tom Moroney and Jim Efstathiou Jr.
April 15 (Bloomberg) -- An Indian tribe’s sunrise ceremony, Nantucket’s whaling-era architecture and a parting wish of Senator Edward Kennedy may block the first wind farm in waters off the U.S. and stymie a potential $270 billion industry.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will rule this month on Cape Wind, a proposal to invest more than $1 billion placing 130 wind-powered turbines in the shallow waters of Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts. A federal advisory council recommended on April 2 that Salazar reject the project because of the “destructive” effects on historic sites.
President Barack Obama campaigned for office pledging to double renewable energy from the wind, sun and biodegradable waste in three years, and the Energy Department says wind can supply 20 percent of U.S. power by 2030 compared with 1.8 percent today. That won’t be achieved if projects are blocked by local opponents like those opposing Cape Wind, said former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
“When we talk about what’s made America’s energy policies so challenging to devise it’s in no small measure this whole not-in-my-backyard sentiment,” Abraham, President George W. Bush’s first energy secretary, said in an interview. “Every time you think you’ve satisfied protest group No. 1, there’s protest group No. 2.”
Leaders of 3,200 Wampanoag Indians with roots in Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard say Cape Wind’s turbine blades, reaching 440 feet into the air, would desecrate the view of the sunrise that’s essential to their prayer ceremonies. A month before Democrat Kennedy died on Aug. 25, he wrote to Obama imploring him to halt action on the wind farm, which would be visible from the senator’s home.
Five Miles Offshore
The Kennedy family’s compound at Hyannisport was among properties cited by the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in opposing the project.
Cape Wind would generate a maximum of 468 megawatts from turbines spread over 25 square miles in U.S. waters about 5 miles off mainland Cape Cod, in an area known as Horseshoe Shoal. The developer, Cape Wind Associates LLC, said on March 31 it would buy turbines from Siemens AG of Germany, which pledged to open a U.S. office in Boston.
Principals in Energy Management Inc., a closely held Boston energy company, put up $40 million in development costs for the project from proceeds on the sale of six natural-gas power plants in 2000, according to Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers.
“Everyone is waiting for Cape Wind to break the ice,” said Jack Clarke, Massachusetts Audubon Society public policy director and chairman of the U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative in Boston. “There would be few investors willing to put themselves at risk if it didn’t look like the U.S. was committed to renewable offshore energy.”
Meeting Target
Meeting the Energy Department’s renewable-energy target for 2030 would require 54,000 megawatts of offshore wind power, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington- based trade group. That would mean investment of as much as $270 billion, based on the Energy Department’s estimate that installing each megawatt costs $2.4 million to $5 million. A megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical U.S. homes.
Northern Europe already has about 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity, with a target to reach 40,000 megawatts by 2020, according to Walter Musial, head of offshore wind research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
About 6,300 megawatts of offshore wind are planned for the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, the Great Lakes and British Columbia, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Environment, Economics
Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in Hyannis, rejects the not-in-my-backyard label. She says her group, which has spent $20 million over nine years to block Cape Wind, has been inaccurately depicted as wealthy and influential people who don’t want their pristine ocean views cluttered by wind towers.
“Aesthetics is one component,” she said. “But it’s about the environment, economics -- what it will do to the fishing industry, and tourism too. It’s a great technical location for the developer, but it’s an awful location from the public- interest standpoint.”
The federal historic panel backed claims by two Wampanoag Indian tribes that Cape Wind would disturb burial grounds now underwater.
“This is the most important fight we’ve had in 400 years since Metacom’s War,” also known as King Philip’s War, said Bettina Washington, historic preservation officer for the Wampanoags of Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard. The 1675 war pitted colonists against Indians in southern New England and ended with 3,800 fatalities.
A third Wampanoag tribe supports the wind farm.
Five-Year Delay
Rejection of Cape Wind would be felt throughout the wind- power industry, said Jerome Guillet, who was head of energy for Brussels-based lender Dexia SA before starting a financial advisory firm in Paris. The next industrial-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. would be delayed for about five years, and equipment manufacturers would be reluctant to invest in factories if the project is turned down, he said.
Cape Wind is a one-of-a-kind dispute, and its fate won’t determine that of other ventures, said Kevin Walsh, managing director of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric Co.
“If it doesn’t get done for whatever reason, political or otherwise, it doesn’t mean offshore wind in this country is done for,” said Walsh. GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, is the largest supplier of wind turbines in the U.S.
Whales, Seals
Relocating the turbines farther offshore isn’t an option because that would interfere with migrating whales and seals, said Jim Gordon, a principal in Energy Management Inc.
The Army Corps of Engineers found Cape Wind would have “minimal” environmental impact. The project still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration because the turbines may interfere with tower-to-aircraft transmissions. It also awaits resolution of a case in the Massachusetts courts.
If impinging on the view from the Kennedy compound were the deciding criteria, “we wouldn’t be able to build anything near any historic structure anywhere,” said Jeremy Firestone, who teaches international environmental policy at the University of Delaware in Newark.
The solution is creation of a federal panel with authority to override local objections, according to Abraham, the former energy secretary. Abraham, who also served as a Republican senator from Michigan, is on the board of Deepwater Wind LLC of Hoboken, New Jersey, which has proposed offshore projects in that state and Rhode Island.
“If you took a poll, there’d be overwhelming support for renewable energy and wind,” Abraham said. “But as soon as you started building it somewhere, that’s another story.”
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-15/obama-wind-farm-goals-threatened-by-indian-rites-kennedy-wish.html
By Tom Moroney and Jim Efstathiou Jr.
April 15 (Bloomberg) -- An Indian tribe’s sunrise ceremony, Nantucket’s whaling-era architecture and a parting wish of Senator Edward Kennedy may block the first wind farm in waters off the U.S. and stymie a potential $270 billion industry.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will rule this month on Cape Wind, a proposal to invest more than $1 billion placing 130 wind-powered turbines in the shallow waters of Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts. A federal advisory council recommended on April 2 that Salazar reject the project because of the “destructive” effects on historic sites.
President Barack Obama campaigned for office pledging to double renewable energy from the wind, sun and biodegradable waste in three years, and the Energy Department says wind can supply 20 percent of U.S. power by 2030 compared with 1.8 percent today. That won’t be achieved if projects are blocked by local opponents like those opposing Cape Wind, said former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
“When we talk about what’s made America’s energy policies so challenging to devise it’s in no small measure this whole not-in-my-backyard sentiment,” Abraham, President George W. Bush’s first energy secretary, said in an interview. “Every time you think you’ve satisfied protest group No. 1, there’s protest group No. 2.”
Leaders of 3,200 Wampanoag Indians with roots in Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard say Cape Wind’s turbine blades, reaching 440 feet into the air, would desecrate the view of the sunrise that’s essential to their prayer ceremonies. A month before Democrat Kennedy died on Aug. 25, he wrote to Obama imploring him to halt action on the wind farm, which would be visible from the senator’s home.
Five Miles Offshore
The Kennedy family’s compound at Hyannisport was among properties cited by the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in opposing the project.
Cape Wind would generate a maximum of 468 megawatts from turbines spread over 25 square miles in U.S. waters about 5 miles off mainland Cape Cod, in an area known as Horseshoe Shoal. The developer, Cape Wind Associates LLC, said on March 31 it would buy turbines from Siemens AG of Germany, which pledged to open a U.S. office in Boston.
Principals in Energy Management Inc., a closely held Boston energy company, put up $40 million in development costs for the project from proceeds on the sale of six natural-gas power plants in 2000, according to Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers.
“Everyone is waiting for Cape Wind to break the ice,” said Jack Clarke, Massachusetts Audubon Society public policy director and chairman of the U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative in Boston. “There would be few investors willing to put themselves at risk if it didn’t look like the U.S. was committed to renewable offshore energy.”
Meeting Target
Meeting the Energy Department’s renewable-energy target for 2030 would require 54,000 megawatts of offshore wind power, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington- based trade group. That would mean investment of as much as $270 billion, based on the Energy Department’s estimate that installing each megawatt costs $2.4 million to $5 million. A megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical U.S. homes.
Northern Europe already has about 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity, with a target to reach 40,000 megawatts by 2020, according to Walter Musial, head of offshore wind research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
About 6,300 megawatts of offshore wind are planned for the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, the Great Lakes and British Columbia, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Environment, Economics
Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in Hyannis, rejects the not-in-my-backyard label. She says her group, which has spent $20 million over nine years to block Cape Wind, has been inaccurately depicted as wealthy and influential people who don’t want their pristine ocean views cluttered by wind towers.
“Aesthetics is one component,” she said. “But it’s about the environment, economics -- what it will do to the fishing industry, and tourism too. It’s a great technical location for the developer, but it’s an awful location from the public- interest standpoint.”
The federal historic panel backed claims by two Wampanoag Indian tribes that Cape Wind would disturb burial grounds now underwater.
“This is the most important fight we’ve had in 400 years since Metacom’s War,” also known as King Philip’s War, said Bettina Washington, historic preservation officer for the Wampanoags of Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard. The 1675 war pitted colonists against Indians in southern New England and ended with 3,800 fatalities.
A third Wampanoag tribe supports the wind farm.
Five-Year Delay
Rejection of Cape Wind would be felt throughout the wind- power industry, said Jerome Guillet, who was head of energy for Brussels-based lender Dexia SA before starting a financial advisory firm in Paris. The next industrial-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. would be delayed for about five years, and equipment manufacturers would be reluctant to invest in factories if the project is turned down, he said.
Cape Wind is a one-of-a-kind dispute, and its fate won’t determine that of other ventures, said Kevin Walsh, managing director of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric Co.
“If it doesn’t get done for whatever reason, political or otherwise, it doesn’t mean offshore wind in this country is done for,” said Walsh. GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, is the largest supplier of wind turbines in the U.S.
Whales, Seals
Relocating the turbines farther offshore isn’t an option because that would interfere with migrating whales and seals, said Jim Gordon, a principal in Energy Management Inc.
The Army Corps of Engineers found Cape Wind would have “minimal” environmental impact. The project still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration because the turbines may interfere with tower-to-aircraft transmissions. It also awaits resolution of a case in the Massachusetts courts.
If impinging on the view from the Kennedy compound were the deciding criteria, “we wouldn’t be able to build anything near any historic structure anywhere,” said Jeremy Firestone, who teaches international environmental policy at the University of Delaware in Newark.
The solution is creation of a federal panel with authority to override local objections, according to Abraham, the former energy secretary. Abraham, who also served as a Republican senator from Michigan, is on the board of Deepwater Wind LLC of Hoboken, New Jersey, which has proposed offshore projects in that state and Rhode Island.
“If you took a poll, there’d be overwhelming support for renewable energy and wind,” Abraham said. “But as soon as you started building it somewhere, that’s another story.”
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-15/obama-wind-farm-goals-threatened-by-indian-rites-kennedy-wish.html
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